ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with an area of dialect syntax – transitivity in south-west of England dialects – and attempts to characterize and explains, synchronically and diachronically, its salient features. When compared with the corresponding standard language, any geographical variety may be characterized by three possibilities: identity; archaism; and innovation. Interestingly enough, it is not uncommon in syntax for and to combine if a given dialect draws extensively on a secondary aspect of an older usage. The only survival of medieval usage is the impossibility of a verb form like milky being anything other than an infinitive. Both B. Widen and Martyn F. Wakelin remind that the originally strictly morphological -y ending has since developed into a syntactic feature. The confusion between of and on is frequent in dialects, but although on may occur where of is expected, the reverse is impossible.
